A businessman from Cardiff, who invested in a little known internet company, is on course to become one of the UK's richest men.

Michael Moritz is a shareholder in Google, now one of the most profitable internet search engines.

The US company is about to float on the stock exchange and his share has been valued at £1.3bn.

The flotation could make the former Cardiff schoolboy by far Wales' richest man.

Mr Moritz's mother still lives in the Penylan suburb of the Welsh capital where he grew up.

It is a world away from Silicon Valley in California and the fortune that the former Cardiff head boy, and Oxford history graduate has amassed since moving to America.

The venture capitalist was appointed to the board of Google five years ago following an investment by his company.

Google, founded in 1996 by two Stanford University students, now gets six million hits a day and finds billions of sites for users.

Michael Moritz is set to become a billionaire overnight

Now the company is selling off part of its stock via an online auction in a move predicted to make $2.7bn (£1.62bn) and value Google at as much as $20bn.

Mr Moritz stands to make, on paper anyway, £1.3bn from the Google sale putting him at number 20 in the UK's rich list.

That is nine places ahead of entrepreneur Sir Terry Matthews, the man behind the successful 2010 Ryder Cup bid who has until now held the title of Wales' richest man with £1.1bn, and eclipsing the Queen's personal fortune of £250m.